Shooters Arjun Babuta, Tilottama Sen Bag Paris Olympics Quotas For India

Arjun Babuta and Tilottama Sen bagged the shooting squad's ninth and 10th Paris 2024 Olympics quota places, on yet another golden day for India at the ongoing 15th Asian Shooting Championship in Changwon. Both the junior and senior Skeet Mixed Team pairs struck gold, as did the men's 10m air rifle team as India had a six-medal day to take their tally to eight gold, seven silver and four bronze medals with five more days of competitions and seven possible quota places left to be won. They have now won three from this edition of the premier continental championship.

Ramita Jindal also won an impressive bronze in the women's air rifle and the trio of Tilottama, Shriyanka Sadangi and herself also won the team bronze in the event. Divyansh Singh Panwar too shot well in the men's air rifle, missing out with a fourth-place finish.

The Indian men's air rifle team comprising Hriday Hazarika in addition to Arjun and Divyansh, however, struck gold with a tally of 1892.4, an impressive 4.1 ahead of China. Japan won bronze. The women's team tallied 1886.2.

"I don't remember the last time I was this happy," quipped Arjun Babuta, a top shooter now for some time, after a momentous silver, finishing behind Tokyo Olympics silver medallist Sheng Lihao of China. His 251.2, 0.9 behind the Chinese ace. "It has been a calculated, planned team effort with all the coaches, psychologists and everyone from Pierre, Thomas and Suma (Shirur) ma'am all getting together. We visualised this and now the effort will be on getting better- a lot of things still need to be improved," the grounded marksman said signing off at the same range, where he had won a World Cup gold last year.

Earlier, Arjun topped qualification with a massive 633.4, while Divyash